THE NEED FOR THIS ART

Currently, there are many sciences treated in
many different ways by an abundance of different authorities with conflicting
opinions that create confusion in the mind of the student: hence, we need
one general Art with general, primordial and necessary principles to test
and scrutinize the principles of all other sciences: now according to Aristotle,
those principles with which the principles proper to other sciences can
be individually tested, belong to all sciences in general, as do the principles
of this Art. With the principles of this Art, all principles can stand,
and without them, none can stand. This is why the Art is most necessary
not only in view of its purpose, but simply per se, given that the specialized
arts and sciences are proliferating beyond measure (as we have said) and
human life is short and the intellect requires some kind of universal instrument
to direct it to its desired objective or purpose, where the objective is
universal just as the human intellect is also a universal power.

The objective is universal, because whatever
is true can be understood and perceived by the intellect on account of
its truth, and therefore the intellect must also be a univeral power, otherwise
there would be a vacuum where the objective would be true, but totally
unintelligible, and this is an impossibility. Therefore the human intellect:

* is a universal power * with an intelligible universal object * and requires a universal habit consisting
of universal likenesses of things * to be used as a universal instrument for
attaining its objective:

without this, the objective remains out of
reach. And this instrument is the General Art, a divine gift to be used
by the human intellect as the general instrument it must have to fulfill
its purpose, learn the truth about things and avoid opinions and errors
by reaching a real understanding of what the truth is.

Inasmuch as it is a science, the Art is one
universal habit to be applied to the other sciences because it makes the
things we can know about other sciences potentially present in the intellect
habituated to the Art. And this Art or science can be acquired by those
on the path of knowledge as an intellectual habit: just as there is a science
called metaphysics that deals with substantial and accidental being, likewise
there can be one Art that deals with real being and rational being, encompasses
the entire multitude of faculties of learning and unites them all. Aristotle
states that all beings can be traced back to some kind of common
unity (Metaphysics XI), and since rational being presupposes the real being
whose likeness it is and from which its own being is effectively derived,
rational being can and must be reduced to real being as something that
is imperfect must be reduced to something more perfect.

Fr. Bernard de Lavinheta, O.F.M., in his Practical
Compendium of the Art of Blessed Raymond Lull. First published in Latin,
in France, in 1523 and reprinted by Minerva in Germany in 1977, in a critical
edition by Fr. Wolfram Platzek O.F.M. This English translation from the
Latin by Yanis Dambergs, May 1999.